When the gun control debate focused around black militants taking up arms, the fulcrums were very different. Indeed, both the NRA and President Ronald Reagan spoke against armed citizens when African American men patrolled neighborhoods brandishing firearms in response to racial violence. The Panthers were not the “well-regulated militia” that the white, conservative stalwarts of Second Amendment advocacy had in mind.

Hence the hypocrisy now of the gun group appealing to African Americans—invoking the Civil Rights movement—to lobby support against gun regulation. The NRA hired Internet star and gun advocate Colion Noir to feature in a video, posted on YouTube Friday, to appeal to the black community. {snip}

{snip}

{snip} But what Noir’s monologue helpfully forgets is that when it came to black men taking up arms in the Civil Rights struggle, the NRA was on the other side of the gun control fence too.

Share This

We welcome comments that add information or perspective, and we encourage polite debate. If you log in with a social media account, your comment should appear immediately. If you prefer to remain anonymous, you may comment as a guest, using a name and an e-mail address of convenience. Your comment will be moderated.

Jefferson

Unfortunately gun control laws have done an extremely terrible job of taking guns away from the hands of criminal thug Mestizos and Bantus.

The__Bobster

That’s not what they’re intended to do.

MekongDelta69

Once again, Salon is a far-left rag.

So for them to be giving the moral equivalence of the NRA to the Black Panthers (while totally insane to normal people), is completely normal to them.

Reg

And a dumb one, too. In the Rosenfeld article linked to, they misspell “Cincinnati”, “tyranny” and “its”. They confuse the 17th and 18th Amendments.

Okay, now I get it. This is what Krystal Ball will look like in 20 years.

Liberalsuck

As an NRA member, I had a suggestion for the NRA. How about fight for the 2nd Amendment and stop these unconstitutional gun laws being implemented rather than wasting their time and the members’ money on commercials trying to be politically correct?

Yes, why are they spending money giving this half-wit a job and official NRA imprimatur when they should be spending money to run “Elitist Hypocrisy” far and wide? The beauty in that ad is that Obama personally had not experienced that kind of direct personal body blow in a very long time.

There are probably 10,000 white men of similar age, intellect and countenance who have YouTube channels on gun and hardware issues that are either on par with or better than what this Colion Noir offers, yet he jumps to the front of the line. We all know the answer to that riddle.

I used to be a NRA member. Spend $25.00 or so and end up a recepient of never-ending junk mail. They spent more than my $25.00 begging me for more $$$. …GOA is money better spent.

Formerly_Known_as_Whiteplight

I just rejoined the NRA after a long hiatus for the same reasons. They do provide a checkbox now for asking that the money spent on their magazine choice, etc., be directing to the fund for fighting for 2nd Amendment rights. This is a step in the right direction on their part. So I’m giving them another chance. I’d like to see Wayne La Pierre make more Constitutional arguments than constantly speaking in way that seems aimed at stirring and evoking paranoia in members or would be members. It isn’t necessary, unless they actually think the average gun owner can only be motivated through stoking the paranoid response.

Don’t need the NRA to “stir and evoke paranoia” within its ranks, when there’s already Dianne Feinstein and Andrew Cuomo to do that job. And I think we’re fixed for well thought out rational Constitutional arguments for a lifetime.

The focus now is boots on the ground, organization, running more of these “Elitist Hypocrisy” ads, and stopping this “gun control is racist” hobby horse. The only reason I re-joined was precisely because of “Elitist Hypocrisy.” I let my membership lapse when the NRA-PVF endorsed Paul Kanjorski over Lou Barletta in Pennsylvania-11 in 2010 and semi-endorsed Harry Reid in the same year. But those are the exigencies when you’re dealing with a pure single issue organization.

Joseph

The answer is the same one to “Why is Ben Carson now the darling of the Republican party when there are 10,000 whites equally or more informed and articulate”? He is of the race nearly invulnerable to liberal vitriol.

Every Black man who wants should be able to own a firearm. As for a militia ever seen any militia outside of White or Asian that was well regulated? They will never be anything more than a mob with guns and with a “well regulated” Militia on hand nothing to fear as a whole.

Svigor

It’s a tricky issue. The African race isn’t evolved enough for the right to keep and bear arms, IMO. But I don’t think 100 million and more whites (who are evolved enough for the right) should be denied their rights, just to have the irresponsible African race disarmed. I’d rather give blacks a right they can’t handle than see mine taken away.

Bill

The gun ban, as all of them were, is NOT about reducing crime. It’s always been about disarming the one race which would rebel against tyranny. If it WERE about reducing gun crime, then the treasonous politicians AND NRA would be saying that the gun ban should be against BLACKS only, as a reinstitution of Jim Crow laws.

As far as that goes, there are always felon-in-possession laws, which knocks out about half of all black men. A dirty little secret is that the NRA supports the enforcement of such, which is not surprising because the NRA supported the original Federal act (1968) which enacted felon-in-possession laws. It’s the Congressional Black Caucus which whines when you enforce those laws.

StillModerated

Mr Colion Noir will prove to be an NRA miscalculation. My guess is that he’ll soon be busted for driving stoned with some teenage tart in his sports car. Watch this space!

Svigor

I’m glad Amren picked this story up. I wanted to comment, but Salon is one of those lefty sites that wants to give the appearance of welcoming comment, but doesn’t actually want to have to hear from the unwashed masses. They only take comments from Facebook and Google account-holders.

The premise of the article is so stupid, so absurd, that it dovetails nicely with the aforementioned comment policy; they know most of their readers are liberal idiots who’ve never even heard of critical thinking. His argument is that the NRA is using snivel rights as a justification for gun rights…but 50 years ago those dirty NRA types were against snivel rights. Which means today’s NRA are hypocrites.

Wow, what…a…gotcha…moment. Amirite? I mean, when I tell libs that the Democrats were the party of slavery in 1860, it always and that Lincoln was a Republican, it always stops ’em dead in their tracks. They don’t just keep flapping their gums without a beat, as if they hadn’t even heard me, much less given a damn. They really take it to heart how hypocritical they are.

When I point out that the government used to enforce segregation, before it started enforcing integration, it always stops Democrats and libs dead in their big-government tracks. They really take it to heart how hypocritical the government is.

Salon’s point: it’s bad when an institution staffed by racists 50 years ago is now staffed by people with “progressive” views on race. It’s HYPOCRISY!

Further discombobulating the left is when you inform them that the NRA:

1. Was established in 1871 because Union soldiers in the War Between the States were such poor shots that Union Army ex-Officers formed an organization to teach northerners how to shoot just in case they were ever needed for another big war (remember, low information crowd, the “Union” is the side that “freed the black slaves”)

2. Supported the major gun control acts of 1934 and 1968, the earlier more heartily than the latter,

3. And would probably still support about half the gun ban and control bills out there today if its membership base not rebelled in the 1975-1980 time frame. Even today, even after the successful “uprising,” there is still a relatively quiet hushed-up internecine power struggle within the NRA between the industry and the grass roots, but one of the things that keeps a lid on that is that the other side has gotten so kooky and extreme in its rhetoric and activism and goals.

guest

Yeah that was my thought. I have no problem with having a black in a visible position in the NRA, except that I know this is going to turn out like an Accenture / Tiger Woods situation, and it won’t bring any new demographics into the NRA.

Roll out the statistics on black crime committed with stolen or otherwise illegal arms and you’ll get an idea of how important the NRA is to black people as far as their own firearm possession is concerned.

Svigor

Roll out the stats on crime and you have a case for gun control. Break out the black crime stats from those numbers and you have cries of “racist!”, and a silenced lib who might just think twice about bringing up crime and gun control again.

So I take sort of an opposite tack from yours…

Uh-Oh

Please allow me to clarify this: I’m saying that most guns in the hands of black lawbreakers are illegal to begin with — having been stolen and/or resold — so the NRA as an agency protecting gun rights for legal enthusiasts has no relevance for the black lawbreakers. They don’t care if someone shooting at them has an illegal or legal firearm and, in fact, are more afraid of being shot by illegal guns in the hands of other criminals than by, say, the police. I’m a gun enthusiast, but I also know that having a gun for protection doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be able to protect yourself with it.

I support the NRA, but this is the stuff of weak seed Whites putting a non-White in the window, instead of standing up for their rights as White people.

We Whites need to stop apologizing for being White and we need to stop trying to include non-Whites in whatever we do so we’ll be acceptable. It’s okay to be White.

Old Right

I see this less as political correctness and more as a shrewd attempt to stop the gun grabbers by bringing into the gun rights coalition as many people as possible. “When they came for the honkies’ guns, I didn’t do anything because I wasn’t a honky. Then, when they came for my guns ….”

bigone4u

Legal gun ownership disproportionately benefits those who are law abiding, which includes a large fraction of whites and asians. I have no objection to a black man (or woman) speaking out for obeying the law and for the second amendment. However, this particular black NRA spokesperson is a bit too ghetto for me to pay a lot of attention to his words. I think the video will be ineffective and a waste of money. That’s my opinion.

Troy

The NRA, like the GOP, is caught in a demographic catch-22. Long ago they embraced the fallacy of “diversity” because they were afraid of being seen as politically incorrect, despite the obvious fact that they were in effect betraying the interests of their base (i.e. conservative white Americans). Fast forward several decades and the diverse (i.e. non-white) populations they sought to court have multiplied to the extent to which they have attained enough political influence to defeat them politically. Their traditional base is alienated and the communists-multiculturalists in opposition are more empowered and hostile than ever. In a feeble (and laughable) attempt to stay relevant the GOP and the NRA are now trying to market themselves to the very groups that are LEAST likely to support them. Meanwhile conservative white Americans are becoming more and more conscious of the depths of their betrayal and the end game of this demographic catastrophe. If this country holds together another 10 years I doubt either aforementioned grous will be anything more than an historical footnote.

Joseph

White controllers in the federal govt have put whites out with the trash. There is no going back. The congress, SC and Whitehouse are lost. The Repubs are setting up “the Magic Cuban” neocon for a soon run. It is dual of the minorities from now on. The best we can hope for is to find refuge in our respective states which are still not hostile to whites.

Michael_C_Scott

The best thing the NRA ever did for me was an Arizona state trooper who forgave me for going 140 mph near Flagstaff on I-40 because of my window sticker. He asked me where my guns were, so I said there was an AK-47 in the trunk and a .45″ 1911A1 in the glove compartment. He let me go, but asked me to re-estimate my TOA at my sister’s house in Tempe. I met her for dinner and not lunch.

Joseph

What they should be doing is showing how whites are being differentially disarmed and disproportionately victims of black violence everywhere but that would not be allowed here in the land of free. They have to use the tools available to them.

5n4k33y35

Yeah, I’m not going to waste my time nitpicking this guy’s style or presentation. At least he’s not a gun-grabbing moron.

Formerly_Known_as_Whiteplight

What everyone is forgetting is that the right to form militia’s is meant to be a right to be excercized OUTSIDE of the government for what ought to be obvious reasons. HOWEVER, it doesn’t mean to support the right of armed groups to be organized anytime. There is another Constitutional prohibition against standing private armies. (I will search the exact wording out if someone here doesn’t for me as a reply). The Black Panthers constitute a standing private army and even one that is pledged to exterminate whites. Whites (mostly) as some might recall, ran into problems back in the early ’90s when they began to form “militias.” This is why. What the 2nd Amendment allows is for citizens to acquire (however they choose), hold and bear arms, AND form themselves into organized militias AT NEED, not as a standing, private army or armies.

For those in the debate claiming that the idea that citizens could own military weapons or even styled weapons has to mean that they could own canons, RPGs, and other ordinance including rolling armor, aircraft, etc., (one case where a poster (elsewhere) went as far in their misinformed exaggeration to list Nuclear Weaponry) THERE IS ANOTHER EXPLANATION to the same interpretation of the idea of the right to form militias AT NEED. The men who quickly responded as Minutemen in Concord in 1776 we regular people who armed themselves with weapons similar to the then current military ones and from that stand on the green in Concord, went on to capture and acquire all the other implements of a modern army. The Founding Fathers knew that if they could do that then, it could be done anytime. We are awash with former military, even former Special Forces trained individuals within our population. i have no doubt that white Americans could quickly work on forming these units AT NEED.

My suggestion is to get to know your white neighbors and sound out the ones that understand the situation and get yourselves loosely coordinated. Don’t be dumb and start to parade around or announce yourselves as this or that organization. Yes, we need a White Rights Association to try to work in the current system to defend ourselves from this ongoing, systematic white genocide in the West, but we ought to be using our vaunted three-digit IQs in going about it.

Token Finn

Never swallow the bait of allowing your opposition to define the height of your jumps. Apparently the NRA did not follow that advice. You’ll keep running away from the R-word until you fall off a cliff.

Jefferson

The racial demographics of NRA membership are as White as the racial demographics of people who love Country music.